Third Battle of Artois

The Third Battle of Artois was fought from 25 September to 4 November 1915 during the Artois-Loos offensive on the Western Front of World War I. Fought in conjunction with the Battle of Loos, the Third Battle of Artois failed to exploit Entente numerical superiority over the Imperial German Army, and the offensive was unsuccessful.

Battle
In 1915, French commander-in-chief General Joseph Joffre and British commander-in-chief Field Marshal Sir John French collaborated on an offensive designed to break through the outnumbered German forces at Artois and Loos in conjunction with the Second Battle of Champagne; several German units had been transferred from the French trenches to the Eastern Front for the Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive.

The Allied assaults on Artois-Loos and Champagne began on 25 September 1915. The French were held back by German artillery and machine guns, and German reinforcements arrived from the Eastern Front by train. The French 10th Army's attacks on the German positions at Vimy Ridge in Artois met a similar fate as the French attackers at Champagne, and the Allies suffered exorbitant losses. The failure of the offensive put France's political consensus under strain, and, in October 1915, a new coalition government under Aristide Briand was formed to continue the union sacree ("sacred union") of France's political parties during wartime.